Your Guide to the World of Furry Fandom
At last! A cool high-quality ashcan we saw last year at San Diego Comic Con is now being printed by Arcana Studio: The Los Valiants Volume 0 graphic novel. “From writer/colorist Edgar Delgado (Ultraduck, Superior Spider-Man, Darth Vader) comes a collection of 7 short stories about Featherbay’s resident superhero, Ultraduck and his friends from Canis Hill. Together they are Los Valiants!” If you remember Ultraduck then you know the quality of art you’ll find here.
image c. 2018 Arcana Studio
Sometimes you just gotta admit when other people say it better. This is direct from Comics Alliance: “Over the past few years Zac Gorman has made a name for himself paying tribute to his favorite video games with his comic Magical Game Time. This October the cartoonist will be spreading that same magic into his first graphic novel, Costume Quest: Invasion of the Candy Snatchers, a companion narrative to Double Fine’s 2010 Costume Quest RPG. While Costume Quest followed a human kid and their friends as they battled candy-stealing monsters called Grubbins to recover their kidnapped sibling from another dimension, Invasion of the Candy Snatchers will flip the script and see what the non-evil Grubbin Klem got up to that Halloween.” What he got up to, it seems, is joining up with some of his fellow young Grubbins to sneak into the human world and try and steal candy — for their own sugar-starved world. Costume Quest: Invasion of the Candy Snatchers is out now in trade paperback from Oni Press.
image c. 2018 Oni Press
Yes, obvious, we know, but too good to pass up. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Dimension X. We’ll let IDW explain it: “The brothers make an interstellar journey to different planets in Dimension X to save key witnesses in the Trial of Krang from assassination! Weird new characters, places, and events abound! This mini-series introduces an all-new villain, Hakk-R, into the world of the TMNT, directly affecting the events of the main ongoing series in this dimension-altering adventure.” The army of creators for this new mini-series includes writers Paul Allor, Devin Grayson, Ulises Farinas, Erick Freitas, Ryan Ferrier, and Aubrey Sitterson; with art by Pablo Tunica, Michal Dialynas, Khary Randolph, Chris Johnson, and Craig Rousseau. The comic mini-series is out already, and the trade paperback collection is coming later in January.
image c. 2018 IDW Publishing
Well this came out of nowhere… Manosaurs Volume 1: Walk Like A Manosaur is a new full-color graphic novel for kids that’s available now from Papercutz. “Leo ‘the Doc’ Jeffries is down on his luck with his run down Dynamic Dino Display until he unearths a box of bonafide dinosaur eggs! The eggs hatch four talking dinosaurs who rapidly adapt and grow into their new environment… the twenty-first century! Now, Tri, Rex, Ptor, and Pterry must navigate life after extinction and defend their new family from forces of the dreaded Armaggedon who would like to make sure these powerful reptiles stay extinct.” Got that? It’s written by Stefan Petrucha and available in trade paperback or hardcover editions.
image c. 2017 Papercutz
An interesting project we stumbled across at the LA. Comic Con, with the deceptively simple title of Bun. Brought to us by the writing and illustration team of Brian Silveira and Lisa Nguyen, Bun is a graphic novel fantasy/horror series the couple created and published themselves. Their web page describes it like this: “A boy. A girl. An unspeakable evil. A rabbit.” An interview in a local newspaper gave us a bit more description: Bun is “…an intricate tale that follows a young boy and his pet rabbit, the titular Bun. The book picks up after the boy, Milo, loses his mother to cancer. In the wake of her death, his father retreats into alcoholism and depression, essentially making the boy an orphan, alone and struggling with his grief. Milo suddenly disappears, transported to another world where his rabbit Bun serves as the only bridge back home.” The first and second installments of this black & white series are available now.
image c. 2017 by Silveira/Nguyen
Cucumber Quest is a popular on-line fantasy adventure comic for young readers, written and illustrated by Gigi D.G. Now it’s been assembled by First Second into a new full-color graphic novel, Cucumber Quest: The Doughnut Kingdom. It goes like this: “What happens when an evil queen gets her hands on an ancient force of destruction? World domination, obviously. The seven kingdoms of Dreamside need a legendary hero. Instead, they’ll have to settle for Cucumber, a nerdy magician who just wants to go to school. As destiny would have it, he and his way more heroic sister, Almond, must now seek the Dream Sword, the only weapon powerful enough to defeat Queen Cordelia’s Nightmare Knight. Can these bunny siblings really save the world in its darkest hour? Sure, why not?” The first volume is available now, in hardcover or trade paperback.
image c. 2017 First Second
And the Christmas comic flood continues, this time with a new title from Action Lab — Northstars Volume 1: Welcome to Snowville. “Holly, the daughter of Santa Claus, and Frostina, the Yeti Princess, must put their differences aside to save the town of Snowville before Christmas is lost forever. They travel through an exotic underground world to save Christmas from the devious Krampus and his oafish Straw Lads.” Krampus who looks like an evil reindeer, it seems. They also said this: “Northstars is what you get if you combine Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with Adventure Time. Like the classic Rankin/Bass specials, it’s a wonderful world where holiday characters such as Santa and his daughter, Holly, rub shoulders with winter warlocks, snow dragons and fall fairies. Like Adventure Time, there is a wry sense of humor and a colorful, quirky cast of characters that both kids and adults will enjoy.” The first ultra-sized hardcover issue is written by Jim Shelley and Haigen Shelley, with illustration by Anna Liisa Jones. Look for it later this month.
image c. 2017 Action Lab
[Back in town again, your ed-otter is happy to get caught up with new furry stuff!] Looking ahead to the delayed-but-still-coming film How to Train Your Dragon 3, Dreamworks Animation have a new full-color graphic novel coming early next year from Dark Horse. “This second standalone graphic novel based on the film series is a new adventure that takes place shortly after the events in How to Train Your Dragon 2, during the period in which Hiccup is desperately trying to fill his father’s role as the chief of Berk. Created with the help of the film’s writer, director, and producer, Dean DeBlois; it bridges the gap between the second and third films. Hiccup, Toothless, and the rest of the dragon riders encounter two deadly yet mysteriously linked threats: One is an island consumed by Dragonvine, an uncontrollable force of nature that’s poisonous to humans and deadly to dragons. The other is an all-new, all-terrifying dragon species – the web-spitting Silkspanners!” As they noted in the press release, How to Train Your Dragon: Dragonvine is written by Dean Deblois and Richard Hamilton, with illustrations by Francisco de la Fuente and Doug Wheatley.
image c. 2017 Dark Horse
Lion Forge have brought a new dark fantasy for young readers to North America with the English edition of The Little Red Wolf, written and illustrated Amelie Flechais. As edited and translated by Andrea Colvin, it goes like this: “A young wolf, on a journey to bring his grandmother a rabbit, is charmed by the nice little girl who offers to help him… but nice is not the same as good. A haunting fairy tale for children and adults alike.” It’s available now in hardcover.
image c. 2017 Lion Forge
